The Observer's Blog

The Nutcracker

The Nutcracker is a tool. His only purpose is to be used by others to crack open shells they aren't able to crack otherwise. Why are we so interested in cracking the nut? Because inside of its hard, flavorless exterior there is soft, delicious meat for us to eat. The Nutcracker provides the means for us to enjoy this tasty treat, which he can never enjoy even though it is the fruit of his labor. His only vocation is to patiently wait until someone feels like eating a nut, and he cracks its shell for them. Hence, the tragedy of The Nutcracker ballet is in the irony that the Nutcracker/Prince, for all his heroism and virtue, is in the end returned to his inanimate state (for an alternate ending, see "Take On Me" video by A-Ha). Only in the hopeful, innocent mind of the young girl is the Nutcracker ever anything more than merely a tool.

Decisions, Decisions

Have you ever thought about about when exactly you decide things? It occurred to me as I was unlatching the bathroom stall door, because I think I had just caught my subconscious deciding something. If you can't pinpoint a moment when decided to take your current job or get married or whatever then it was probably while you were spitting out your toothpaste or slamming your car door shut. It's kind of scary, but telling, to think that our most important decisions are made while doing the most mundane tasks.

But I'd also suspect there are times when I'm definitely not deciding things, like when I'm watching a movie or TV show or maybe driving. I suspect this because at these times my senses are sort of saturated, and I don't really have the mind to process thoughts internally. I'm either being barraged by entertainment, which is engrossing me (hopefully) with its captivating story or emotional scenes, or my visual and motor senses are plugged in to the traffic world while my audio senses are either rocking out or involved in conversation.

Hopefully this has been some use to those of you who found my blog by searching "how to have a threesome blogs" on Google (I'm the # 3 hit for that search string as of today). If you're confused, no I have not ever given out advice on how to construct (compile? convene?) a threesome, but I think I have mentioned the existence of threesomes once, and maybe that some people are interested in having them. I actually do have advice, I'm just not giving it. The advice I'm not giving is based on experience but on internal revelation and an extrapolation of my experiences. No interpolation is involved.

M-O-N-E-Y

There is a group on Facebook dedicated to helping Darfur, a region of Sudan. The idea is that for every 1,000 people who join the group the guy who started it will donate $1 to some organization working in Darfur. On Facebook, it's easy to get hundreds of thousands of people to join a group electronically, as recently evidenced by a group on Facebook claiming that this guy named "Ruckus Brody" would be allowed to have a threesome with his girlfriend if the group reached 300,000. Later an internet porn scheme was somehow implicated in the creation of this Facebook group, and it turned out that there never was going to be a threesome. The point is that people on Facebook love to be in huge groups, and they will join groups at the rate of 1-2 per second if there is some new huge group forming.

So Darfur will get a few hundred dollars for the effort of 833 man-hours (35 days straight) of mouse-clicking (assuming it takes 10 seconds to join a group). Somehow I find the whole situation fascinating. The willingness of people to expend minimal effort on what sounds like a good cause, especially the willingness to donate money or cause money to be donated. Imagine if everyone who joined the group actually read the linked article about Darfur; that would be amazing. I actually bet some large fraction of them did, because if you're on Facebook you're just trying to kill a little time and an article on genocide is just as good as updating your profile to include "Coldplay" under your favorite music.

I haven't joined the group because to me it somehow seems demeaning: my response to caring about something should be a little more than joining a group where 0.1 cents of someone else's money gets donated to an unnamed organization. And I don't have the time to read that article on the Darfur genocide anyway. In group members' defense, the "it can't hurt" attitude seems equally reasonable, at first. But then I thought about the first debriefing meeting our mission team had upon returning from Swaziland this summer. Apparently one of the cardinal rules of mission work is not to give anyone money while in country. Money, according to the mission expert, always leads to more pain or suffering. If you give it to someone in need, they become a target of evil, or else they themselves are tempted to use it in an unhealthy way. For example, if you want to pay a child's school fees, you send money directly to the school and not to the child or their family (if they have one). It's a hard principle to believe, especially since it's much easier for most people to give money than to invest time into a cause, but it's easy to see how it would be true.

Beard Control

Tonight my substantial finger hair had a close encounter with a birthday candle. Besides making a wonderful smell and sculpting my finger hair into a uniform bristly surface, the incident reminded me how different our hair is from our skin. If my skin were to come close to a candle it would just get warm or pink, not vaporize.

Hair is so fragile! Why hasn't someone been able to exploit this fact to find a less painful solution to the problem of unwanted facial/body hair? I thought our civilization was advanced enough to cheaply make chemicals that denature proteins. If so, why are we not focusing on making those chemicals that can denature the proteins of the hair on our face? Imagine being able to spread some gel on your face and have the hair dissolve right into your hands . . .

If I'm somehow wrong about the protein denaturing chemicals, then the fire solution seems just as plausible. A short but intense, highly localized blast of heat to the face designed to vaporize hair but not burn skin. This device might also be useful for cutting hair, either your own or your enemies. Imagine being able to render an entire person hairless from a mile away . . .

The Miserable Inhabitants of Santa Cruz

I have been in frigid Santa Cruz, California, for about 48 hours now. During that time, I have encountered four people who apparently typify the attitude of locals in service jobs. I only met one person, a convenience store clerk who gave me clear and correct directions, who does not subscribe to the same attitude of service that the other four showed. These are their stories . . .

(Names have been changed to protect the poorly served from legal action.)

Dotty

The night I arrived in Santa Cruz, I went out with my two travel companions to get a late dinner. We ended up at a diner that was almost packed at midnight. After waiting a few minutes, we were seated at a table with menus. The menu selection was impressive, and luckily we had plenty of time to make up our minds. Then, 10 minutes later, Dotty walked up to our table slouching and, without a word, slowly flipped over the top page of her receipt pad and readied her pen to take an order. She didn't say anything. Each of us ordered without any verbal response from our server. We asked for water, and she acknowledged with a sound. She let out a silent breath as if she had just completed a very difficult task, and walked away, barely lifting her feet off the ground. The first plate arrived 20 minutes later. Dotty delivered it, dropped it really, without making eye contact or asking who it belonged to. The next two plates came out in a similar fashion, and we were told, "pancakes on way." Pancakes was definitely not capitalized. We saw Dotty once more during our meal, and I think she started opening up to us more. After each encounter she returned more of our communication with actual verbal sounds. From the looks of it, I'd guess that this 24-hour diner was actually so called because their staff works in 24 hour shifts. What a miserable job.

Chris

Being a liquor store clerk has its advantages and disadvantages if your goal at a job is to do as little work as possible like Chris. On the one hand, you generally don't have to bag as many items as grocery clerks and you're less likely to have a gun pointed at you than a convenience store clerk. But on the other hand, you have to not only take money and give change but also check IDs, which is yet another delay in the next window of time during which you have nothing to do but stand there. Chris knows that he is not paid to make eye contact, show any sort of expression on his face, or say anything to the customer but a single number (the amount due).

Kate

Kate is a bartender. She works hard for the money. She serves her customers well and expects to be rewarded for that service. Your beer costs $4? She'll take the five you give her and say "Thanks" while scrunching her nose in such a way as to add "I'll just take my tip from your change." I'm pretty sure this violates some sort of bartender code, but Kate doesn't care.

Josh

Josh's job requires him to stand outside in the miserable cold for hours. After a couple of hours a hoodie and baseball cap just don't keep you warm, and it makes Josh start to lose the will to move. When people show up to the bar to enter, Josh has to check their ID. It doesn't say anywhere that he has to stand by the door. If he happens to be standing 10 ft from the door, Josh expects that the patrons will see him standing under that tree over there and walk over to him to get their wrist stamped. Sometimes this will cause minor confusion, but at least Josh didn't have to move.